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Calla of the Sunglade
Early Life It was a chilly autumn morning when Alyra Vesten, Druid of Sunglade Forest, awoke to the sounds of a crying infant. The sounds of the young had awaken her many times, but those were beasts of the forest... this was very different. She pulled herself from the ground and walked to the southeast edge of the ring of six massive stones that were her's to protect. Laying amidst the yellowing grass was a baby girl wrapped in tanned deer hide. The child's parents were nowhere to be seen, and Alyra wondered over how they were able to approach and leave the Glade of the Circle without her notice. She lifted the child from the earth and looked up at the stone by which she had been laid. It bore the symbol of the element of the soul, reminding her of her sacred duty to protect all natural life. She named the child Calla, which in the language of the trees meant "wind," because only the night breeze could have delivered her with so much stealth. That mystery aside, Alyra knew that a human child would require much more care than any she'd been tasked to rear before, and she steeled herself for the challenge before her. The child looked at her and laughed. From an early age, the child showed an aptitude for manipulation of the elements. From the first days of her druidic training through her full initiation, magic was her gift. Alyra had always relied on her shape-shifting abilities to defend the forest... it was clear that her chosen successor, though chosen by who she did not know, would be a different kind of protector. Though somewhat lonely at times, Calla's life was a good one. She spent her time traveling among the trees with Alyra, playing with the local fauna, and practicing her magic. If she had one regret about her youth, it was that she rarely got to see other people. Occasionally, someone would visit the stones seeking aid, but aside from those brief glimpses, most of what she learned about people, human nature, and interpersonal wisdom came from her mistress. In her sixteenth year, Calla's life went through its first real change. Her mistress traveled west to investigate a disturbance near the ruined city, the one place within the forest that Calla was not permitted to go. Alyra never returned. After a week had past, Calla went to look for her mistress, but she found no sign of her. After days of searching for some clue, she returned to the Glade of the Circle, knowing that if her mistress lived, she would eventually returned. For many years, Calla stood in her mistress' place, protecting the surrounding forest, tending to all the life beneath the trees, and even occasionally assisting a human or Halfling that came looking for Alyra's aid. She was in her early twenties when the wailing cry of a young girl brought her life its second great change. The girl was not an infant, but still a child... another orphan lost, hungry, and alone, though through much different means. Artemis Delathane's father, a hunter by trade, had been teaching her his art far too close to the Ogres March when they came upon a patrol of goblins led by a pair of orcs. Her father had ordered her to run and stood his ground, putting his daughter's life before his own. Fatherless, motherless for her entire life, the young huntress had no one left. Bored with her life of solitude and seeing this as a sign from the spirits, Calla invited the girl to join her at the stones. Over the next few years, Calla trained the young girl in the ways of the forest, while Artemis concerned herself less with magic and more with the hunt, interrogating every visitor for information on and rumors of the goblinoids of the north. Once the younger girl was of age, Calla guarded the forest while Artemis patrolled its borders, preying on goblins while praying to one day find the band that took her father's life. Calla did her best to focus the young ranger's vengeance and temper it into a sense of justice. When possible, she took the girl with her on missions of mercy and aid. She sought to be the kind of even-tempered, wise mentor that Alyra had been to her... though it wasn't often easy. Especially after Artemis befriended the mist cat, a predator from the northwestern reaches of the forest. Even as she tried to temper the girl, Calla found herself becoming more proactive, often heading off potential threats to the forest and Glade before they started. The kobolds that found occasion to loiter near the lost city became a less common sight, the goblins kept to their foothills, and the bullywugs to their swamp. Despite her best efforts, the young druid found herself developing a taste for adventure. It was that adventurous spirit that led Calla to take Artemis with her to investigate strange activity near the ruined city. When they arrived, they found a field of the dead... elves unseen in the forest for millennia scattered like broken twigs at the edge of the ruins. To her surprise, they found one -- another young woman -- still breathing. Wasting no time, they returned with her to the stones to see to her wounds. When the elf girl awoke, she could remember little of herself or her mission. She knew that elven leaders from her home -- an island she believed -- had sent her and the others to reconnoiter the ruins of Mythrasil. She could not identify her attackers, only that she had fallen quickly in the ambush. She barely remembered her own name, Tenaeryanlunamis Tarianven'tel... Tarian Silvermoon. Without a second thought, Calla offered her a place at the stones until her memory could regain its focus. The young girl abandoned at the edge of the stones had become a druid, a protector of the forest, and now, to her two charges, she had become more... a den mother. Saining Shadows When a Halfling scout by the name of Bosley Greencloak appeared at the Glade of the Circle, Calla led her charges to the town of Meadowvale from which, according to Bosley, halflins were disappearing. He believed that they were being abducted by one of their own, a shopkeeper named Waldon Goodpipe. Several of the missing folk had been last seen in or near Waldon's shop, though no evidence could be found to convince the mayor of any misdeeds. The group investigated the town and Waldon's shop, where they saw, after hours, Goodpipe engaged in conversation with a goblin. They intervened, capturing Goodpipe and pursuing the creature through the store. The goblin was stopped just as it was entering a secret door in the shopkeeper's basement. Calla led her team through the door and down a long tunnel that ended outside of town near a goblin camp. There they learned that Waldon had been making quite a bit of coin selling off his own people to the goblins as slaves. The four investigators confronted the goblins, defeated them, and freed the Halfling slaves, all of whom -- along with Calla -- were more than happy to present their testimony to the mayor. Greenpipe was incarcerated pending a formal hearing before the mayor. A couple of weeks after returning to the stones, the trio was awakened by an earthquake in the southeastern part of the forest. The animals told them that a crack had opened in the earth and evil things rose from beneath. The group investigated to discover the area teeming with a variety of giant, aggressive spiders. Despite some misgivings, Calla led the group through the creatures and to the crevasse, where they discovered some curious campers about to become the victims of a humanoid, spider-like creature that Calla identified as an ettercap. The team overcame the creature, saved the humans from a grisly fate, and used all the skills at their disposal to fill the crack and prevent any more spiders from escaping the caves beneath. Some time later, the trio learned that the people of Oakwood were having trouble fetching water from the Fairwinding River. The stories told of angry spirits along the best-traveled path. They traveled to the path and encountered a number of terrifying, intangible creatures that turned out to be illusions cast be a mischievous and territorial faerie dragon. Kip the Almighty, His Exalted Eminence, Highest of the High, and Lord Beneath the Trees -- as he introduced himself -- was quite put off by the fact that a group of water-bearers from the town had recently trampled all over a ring of mushrooms he had been cultivating to try to get in good with a couple of nearby pixies, Mariosella and Aeana. He decided that scaring the humans away would teach them a lesson about breaking other people's things. After some posturing and threat by her two more battle-ready allies, Calla managed to convince Kip to stand down, negotiating on behalf of the people of Oakwood. Kip was given promise that the villagers would build him a shrine, plant him some "yummy" fruit trees, and steer clear of his mushrooms in exchange for being allowed to retrieve much-needed water un-accosted. After the negotiations, Calla informed the villagers of their side of the bargain to which they reluctantly agreed. Most recently, Calla led the team to investigate a group of elves setting up camp in the southern reaches of the forest. They arrived in time to help stem off a zombie attack, after which the trio, along with two of the elves, set off to track the creatures back to their source. After dealing with a few more zombies and, upon reaching the Fens, some territorial bullywugs, the group found a barrow containing another group of zombies and skeletons, as well as a strange stone that seemed to be spontaneously animating them. Calla examined the stone and determined that it was drawing power from the spiritual plane and feeding that energy into nearby corpses. She tried unweaving the magic, but with not luck, so determined that the only way to bring an end to the undead threat was to destroy the stone, an order promptly executed. Believing the threat to be ended, the group returned to the burgeoning elven settlement to report on what they had seen. Real World Calla is a neutral good human female Circle of Life Druid. Her signature spell is shillelagh, which she uses to good effect, and she usually has hold person, speak with animals, and faerie fire on standby regardless of the situation. She is the leader (and primary thinker) of her party, but usually takes a back seat to Tarian once combat begins. In noncombat situations, she often prompts her "younger" charges (Tarian has almost 70 years on Calla, but is younger from an elven perspective) to figure out things for themselves to help them better learn from the troubles in which they find themselves. Calla is usually self-confident but reserved. She does not seek to be the center of attention. She is proud of her magical aptitude, but rarely uses her wildshape ability, the one power she possesses in which she does not feel confident. In a battle, she prefers to stay in the back and use spells while her allies get into position, but rarely hesitates to move in and thump the enemy with her shillelagh once the fray is underway. Category:Characters Category:Player Characters